Champion Remake - Heimerdinger

Champion Remake - Heimerdinger

Hi everyone. Hope you're doing great. I'll leave a warning here: this post is huge and full of theories, so turn back if you were expecting a light read.

Riot was thinking about making a remodelling of Heimerdinger (Heimer for short) in the future, and that made me think a lot about what could happen and such. I even had brainstorming in my bed rather than going to sleep, which made me wake up a bit later today.

We know that Heimer revolves around his turrets, and a lot of players loved the 3 turrets before balance switched the total to 2. Because having a third turret was probably too powerfull for the time (didn't remember the reasons why the nerf was made...).

So, how about the third turret be a different ability instead of a third turret on the q... as an ultimate turret?

Understand what i meant?

Well, that would mean hampering with the other abilities a little, so i'll give a layout of all of the abilities of this Heimerdinger version i had in mind.

-> Passive: Field ExperienceHeimerdinger is a natural thinker, and adjusts to the battlefield according to all factors. His passive will be a reflection of that, giving him 2% Cooldown reduction per level, to a total of 36% at level 18.
This new passive would replace the previous passive on Heimer's late ultimate, raising it at a fixed speed along the levels to give Heimer steady, balanced power.

(Note: This can synergize with one of the earlier offensive talents, giving the 40% max at level 18. If developers believe that this would be overpowering for said passive, reducing the increase to 1,5%, for a total of 27%, would be a viable choice)

Q -> H-28G Evolution Turret
Ah yes, what makes Heimer famous: his turrets. This ability has to alter a bit due to the ultimate turret and the plans i have with it.

Heimer will be able to place both turrets at rank one. Their initial damage would have to decrease a little until the third rank, at which the damage would have normal values since it's at that point that Heimer would have access to his second turret.

Also, the upgrades per rank would also change:

Rank 2: Reparing Microdroids. Turrets can heal turrets and champions at either a fixed rate (1% health per 5 seconds, like a pulse heal) or at an increased rate for every new rank gained in the skill (5 HPS per rank, ending at 20 per second on rank 5). I'll just state that this will be a Unique aura buff, so stacking turrets under the tower to heal it is out of the question.

Rank 3: Piercing Bullets. The original rank two, only with a lower cap of 30 instead of 50.

Rank 4: Hardware Upgrade. Turrets' maximum health is increased by 30%. The reason why i changed this rank from a 100 hp to a percentage increase will be explained below.

Rank 5 Exploding Bullets. Rank 5 remains the same, although i'd advise a small range increase for the aoe radius.

W -> Hextech Micro-Rockets

Heimer's rockets are unique due to the fact that the rockets have homing properties on the closest targets. However, with the UPGRADE removed, they won't have that extra ammo during teamfights.

I'd leave the spell untouched, although adding a 4th rocket at rank 3 and a fitfh rocket at rank 5 would be nice and allow interesting choices, as should a player choose powering up his rockets as a form of harassement instead of focusing on his turrets early game, or go for the turrets earlier. You'll see what i mean later on.

E -> CH-1 Concussion Grenade

Heimer's aoe spell with stun/blind included. The only thing i would change on the Grenade is its travelling speed, now that UPGRADE is gone. Increasing the speed slowly per rank would grant an investment should per person prefer to use the aoe and stun rather than the guaranteed hits from the missiles.

R - W4-R0 Advanced Turret

And here we are: Heimer's 3rd turret. The ability that can change games when well played (that is the definition of an ultimate, no?).

Now, for its capabilities. W4-R0 is an advanced turret with increased health, damage and range that can be placed like a ward (including all the range gimmicks wards have even) and can be removed from the field back to Heimer's backpack . The turret will only attack champions, though it will prioritize on champions that are attacking itself or Heimer.

First, its setting properties. How can the game make the turret behave like a portable object? By use of buffs. Suppose Heimer gets to level 6 and choses his ultimate. He gets a buff in which his turret is ready. He then places the turret, with an attacks speed bonus like the other turrets, and it attacks the champion within its range. During this, Heimer gets another buff which states that the turret is deployed. The opponent teleports back to base, so the turret did its job. Heimer closes in to the ward range and presses R again to do a quick cast spell to pick up the turret. The turret is retrieved, but Heimer does not get the ready buff.

This happens because retrieving the turret, or even losing it, will trigger a cooldown. Should the turret be destroyed, Heimer's backpack will need to create a new one through a long cooldown (say 2 minutes). But should Heimer retrieves the turret, it will have a lower cooldown due to the lesser need of minor repairs (30 seconds, 25% of the longer cooldown). Just to leave it clear: if Heimerdinger dies while his turret is on the field, the long cooldown will be induced.

These mechanics make Heimer players do a strategic use of the turret. Heimer could use the ward gimmicks and place it further beyond his range on the other side of the rock near the river, but then he could lose the turret and induce its long cooldown, and retrieving it could make him vulnerable to enemies.

Beyond the ward/buff properties, it will have two innate abilities:

- it can target players hidden by the fog of war and beyond obstacles. For example, if you place the advanced turret on the brush to the right of the blue field golem camp, beyond the trees, the turret would have enough range to hit any enemy champion that would go for the golem, revealing his position and intentions. It cannot hit player in brush, so said champion could lure the golem to the brush or out of range and be safe from the W4-R0's danger.

- it will gain all the turret bonuses that the Q turrets already have, so the more ranks you invest on Q, the better your R is. This was the reason i had to remove the aditional turret at rank 2, as having a second W4-R0 would mean troubles to the buff system i had in mind. The fixed health increase would be of lower use to the turret. And in the previous example, if Q has 5 ranks, then your ultimate will also shower aoe bullets, which could, with a stroke of luck, kill the golem and steal the buff to you.

Now, the turret's damage and health wil also increase with ranks. But the ranks will also give the turret new capabilities, unique only to W4-R0.

I was thinking of two ways:

The first one is a static one, in which happens the following:

- Rank 2: Frost Bullets. Bullets have slowing properties, reducing the speed of champions it hits by 25%. This will replace the frost properties that lower turrets had during the UPGRADE ultimate and return the need-for-slow feel that Heimer summoners have.

- Rank 3: Improved Scope. Not only will the turret have a small range increase, it would also be able to hit enemy champions in the brush. I'll let your mind think of the strategies involving this.

The second way is to have multiple choices. Like Kha'Zix capability in upgrading 3 of his abilities, Heimer will be able to choose 2 out of 4 possible upgrades:

- Frost Bullets: explained above

- Improved Scope: explained above

- Heat-Proof Railgun : W4-R0's attack speed will double.

- Demolisher Upgrade : W4-R0 will be able to attack buildings, focusing on them first until a champion either attacks the turret or Heimer/friendly champion.

As you can see, there's a lot of choices that can come from this, from a sniper turret to a team fight turret, or even a tower push turret (Nunu Bot would be so proud). The combos revolving around Heimer would be vast and amazing.

This would increase Heimer's playing dificulty a lot, but i believe it would bring him back to the tournaments with the turret love that many summoners had about him.

I hope you enjoyed reading what i had to say, and feel free to contribute. I was also hoping (dearly) one thing: that a Riot developer would come here and give his own feedback about these changes. Is a certain change welcomed? Or is a feature rather over-powered? If a dev would come her and explain a bit, it would enlight my thoughts a lot, which would contribute to other brainstorming sessions.

I must say I enjoyed reading your post Gerrion, good ideas you put out there and I can't wait for the Heimerdinger remake to come out.
I play Heimerdinger mid, mostly because I think he is fun. I tend to struggle a lot when playing against almost every champion though.

To list my opinions:

1: 2 turrets is just fine, even though I would like 3 I see how that would be too much. Maybe have like 1 main turret and 2 lesser turrets to watch the bushes if to change anything with them and having them upgrade to main turrets when using the upgrade ultimate. Something like you mentioned here, only that I would have 2 ward turrets and one hard hitting turret.

2: Rockets as threadstarter mentions should prioritize champions and go after the champions giving out most heat, which could mean going for the enemies with the lowest health (warm blood dripping out) or it could be disrupted by Brands fire abilities, Rumbles fire ability, Udyrs phoenix stance, Ziggs bombs, Corkis fire trail or even the fire cape item, making any champion with fire able to maybe save their teammate. This would only work if the fire was close to the dying champion.

3: The concussion grenade travels way to slow, the only time I hit enemies with it, is if they run after me, making it more like an escaping ability which frankly dosen't work all that well for escapes. I like to look at the grenade as Heimerdingers answer to Anivias flash frost, the grenade travels so slow it hardly works for anything else then damaging minions. Making it to a pure escape tool could be an option.

4: Upgrade is very good and balanced as is now, but a total remake of Heimerdinger could mean a remake for this ability too, which could be fun as I must admit it's one of the most boring ultimates in the game. You don't get the rushfeeling you get when firing Ziggs atombomb or Caitlyns sniperbullet.

I have found that the best way to play Heimerdinger now is to put yourself at risk, end up at low health and have the enemies chase you, either just away or to lead them into a bush, making Heimerdinger more of an ambusher kind of.

It's also very hard to not be pushy as Heimerdinger due to his turrets, it's not a bad thing, but it leaves you constantly at risk of a gank without any real ability, other than flash to get out. What I would like is to make the consussion grenade more into an escape ability like Anivias wall or Graves smoke bomb. That way making him a bit safer to play mid.
Just take a look at Nidalee, also a pusher, but with heal, and the cat form jump ability she escapes far easier, aswell as being a heavy pusher.

how about instead of a permanent third turret for ultimate put a GIANT TURRET that shoots out 1/2/3 mid range lux beam style attacks (at like 50% range) firing at random or last target hit by heimerdinger